Market research is an organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. Market research can include social and opinion research performed to systematically gather and interpret information about individuals or organizations using statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain insight or support decision making. Viewed as an important component of business strategy, market research can be a key factor to obtain advantage over competitors. Market research provides important information to identify and analyze market need, market size, and competition.
The advent of mobile devices, such as smart phones, presents new opportunities for enlisting mobile device users as respondents in performing market research. However, the limited touch screen interfaces of such mobile devices presents new challenges for interfacing with respondents in performing market research surveys. Accordingly, new challenges have arisen regarding obtaining and meaningfully representing results of such research.